


i still fucking love you

by underthestars320



Category: Space Force (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breakup, I am so sorry for this, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:53:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28707714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underthestars320/pseuds/underthestars320
Summary: Chan and Tony breakup, but neither of them are really ready to move on.
Relationships: Angela Ali & Chan Kaifang, Angela Ali & F. Tony Scarapiducci, Chan Kaifang/F. Tony Scarapiducci
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	i still fucking love you

~Chan’s P.O.V.~

It had been 5 weeks. 5 weeks since their argument, 5 weeks of sleeping on Angela’s couch, 5 weeks of only wearing a small collection of outfits he’d accidentally left there before because he was too scared to go get his things from the apartment, 5 weeks of Chan being asked if he wanted a hug or if he wanted to talk, and 5 weeks of just saying “no thanks.”

He liked to drive around in his car, specifically trying to avoid all the places he and Tony would go on dates, or where they would go when they had Angela’s truck and wanted to stargaze. It took him a while to get used to going back to Angela’s after work instead of to the apartment he and Tony shared, and every once in a while he would still find himself sitting in the car outside of the building. He knew that Tony was probably in the living room, watching a movie or just scrolling through his phone. He wanted to go up there, partially just to see if he was doing okay, and partially to see if Tony was feeling as broken as he was.

People at work kept asking if he was doing okay, and of course he was grateful that his coworkers cared about his well-being, but there was really only one person there that he wanted to talk to. Tony was always smiling at work, and Chan knew him well enough to know that a lot of the time he didn’t actually feel as happy as he looked, but there was a little voice in the back of his head always telling him that Tony really was happier now that Chan was out of his life. He hated himself for it, but he kept wondering if Tony had ever been happy with him, or if he had ever loved him at all.

*

“Chan!” Angela called from the kitchen while Chan was reading on the couch, “I made pasta, get in here before I eat all of it.”

“Yeah, coming,” Chan had always cooked for Tony when they were together, partially because he likes cooking, but mostly because Tony could only make boxed mac & cheese and toast. After he started living with Angela, though, Chan barely even went in the kitchen. Something about cooking for someone that wasn’t Tony, or even just cooking for himself, felt wrong. He would look through Tony’s Instagram and see all his pictures of the food Chan had made for them (he was very adamant about documenting every single thing Chan cooked), and he just couldn’t bring himself to cook anything. Angela was fine with making food for both of them, she wasn’t a world-class chef or anything, but Chan couldn’t criticize her food when he couldn’t make anything himself.

She had even started making breakfast for both of them before they went to work, toast with strawberry jam every single day. Chan had only ever put peanut butter on his toast; nothing else, just peanut butter. It wasn’t that he didn’t like jam or butter, he just was used to it. Tony always used peanut butter and a very hefty amount of strawberry jam, and he’d always try to convince Chan to try something else, but Chan would just shrug and say peanut butter was enough. The first time Angela made him toast, Chan didn’t say anything, so she just kept making it with jam, and he just kept taking it instead of asking for peanut butter because if he thought about it too much he would just start thinking about Tony.

*

Chan and Angela usually finished work at different times, so they would rarely drive to work together. When Chan and Tony were together, Chan would drive in the mornings and Tony would wait for him to be done to drive them home after work. Chan had found himself far too often in the past few weeks walking up to Tony’s office after finishing in the lab, only to realize that he was already gone, having no reason to stay behind anymore. Every time it happened, Chan would linger in the doorway for a minute more instead of leaving right away, trying to recall all their happy memories from the year they were together, and trying as hard as he could not to think about why this was where he had ended up.

When they first started dating, Chan loved coming to work every day. He loved being able to see Tony whenever he could, and being able to eat lunch together, and being able to leave notes and other things for each other on their desks, so that both of them were constantly reminded of the other. Those constant reminders now haunted him every time he walked into the lab. He kept everything Tony had given him in his desk drawer because he couldn’t bring himself to throw them away, but he also couldn’t bring himself to look at them. He thought he was pretty much safe from all the memories that could be brought up, but he always found something.

The worst of everything he found was the poster board with information about the star he and Tony had named after the president. Chan didn’t even remember how he had found it, but it was one of the worst moments he’d had since the breakup. Up until that point, Chan was pretty sure he had overthought everything he possibly could about their relationship, but that board brought up every memory they had together and every insecurity that went along with them. It brought back the voice in the back of his head, whispering menacing words that ate away at his happy thoughts until there was nothing left but his insecurities and fears.

He was completely still, holding the poster board and looking down at it but not being able to read anything on it through the tears that were forming in his eyes. He couldn’t remember how happy and loved Tony had made him feel, he could only remember the very end. He remembered the yelling, he remembered how badly Tony’s words hurt him, and he remembered the bitter taste of his own words, but most of all, he remembered how hurt Tony had looked after he said them. The only other time Chan had even started to think about that day was when he tried to listen to the La La Land CD he found in his car. Tony would always listen to it on the way home from work, screaming the lyrics at the top of his lungs, and Chan couldn’t even make it through the first song before he had to turn it off. It was worse with the star board, though, because he couldn’t just turn it off. It would always be there, a haunting reminder of everything that had happened between them, and how broken Chan felt inside because of it.

*

He was angry at Tony at first, but that passed fairly quickly and he became more angry at himself, constantly questioning if he could have changed how things ended, or if he had just not been enough for Tony. Eventually, though, he stopped being angry altogether. When he saw Tony, or something that reminded him of Tony, he would still get the overwhelming wave of sadness, but instead of it being accompanied by anger or bitterness, it would remind him of how much he missed their relationship and how much he wished there was a way to fix it. He hadn’t really realized it, though, until Angela took him to the movies.

His first date with Tony had been going to the movies; a theater near Wild Horse was showing The Phantom Menace, and Tony picked at every detail of the movie on the car ride home. Before he got out of the car, Chan told him that he loved the prequel trilogy, and Tony made fun of him for being a “prequel apologist” whenever he could from that point on. They always made a point to go to the movies at least once a month, Tony would always buy the tickets and Chan would buy the snacks because—unlike his boyfriend, who once said to him, “You’ve gotta steal it now so your wallet doesn’t feel it later”—he was too scared to sneak the food in, let alone steal anything.

“Can you go get some snacks while I buy the tickets?” Angela asked, gesturing to the snack counter, “Just get popcorn and Red Vines for me if they have them.”

Chan didn’t want to cause any problems just because a small part of him didn’t want to buy snacks at a movie theater when he wasn’t with Tony, so he just nodded and walked over to the snack counter. There aren’t a lot of movie theaters near where they live, so he had been at this particular snack counter about a million times, buying popcorn and M&Ms for Tony because he always wanted to mix them together. Chan had told him that mixing them together was weird the first few times he did it, but now he found himself missing it. It was familiar to him now; a reminder of something great he had once had, a reminder of everything he missed about Tony. So he bought Red Vines for Angela, and he bought M&Ms to mix into the popcorn, for Tony.

The movie wasn’t great, and Chan knew that if Tony had seen it with him, he would be going through a mental list he had kept throughout the movie of every thing that he thought was wrong. Most people find that annoying about him, but Chan missed it. There’s no feeling quite like listening to someone you love talk about the things they’re passionate about, and if critiquing movies was what Tony was passionate about, Chan could have listened to him for hours. Now, though, Tony wasn’t there for him to listen to. He loved spending time with Angela, but she wasn’t Tony. He missed his voice, and his laugh, and he missed the way he smiled, and the way he would look at Chan like he was the only person in the galaxy. He missed everything about Tony and everything they had done together, and he wished more than anything that there was a way he could get it back.

“Chan,” Angela said suddenly, causing Chan to jump a bit.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“Dude, I’ve been saying your name for like 3 minutes, you were really lost in thought or something,” she said, giving him a concerned look, “Are you doing okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine I just…” he trailed off, looking blankly at the road, “I miss Tony.”

“Oh,” her face softened a bit.

“I just miss having him around, you know? I mean, I really thought that he was it for me, but now he’s gone and it just sucks,” he kept his eyes on the road in front of him, desperately trying to keep himself from crying, “And I know that last fight was bad, but we didn’t even try to talk about it afterwards, I just left. Is it ridiculous to think that I could’ve prevented this?”

“You’re not ridiculous,” Angela assured him, turning her gaze back to the road as well, “But there also wasn’t really any way you could have avoided it.”

“Right, I know, it’s just hard. I don’t know what to do, obviously we had our issues, but the way I felt about him—the way I still feel about him—it’s different than anything I’ve ever felt before,” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a keychain,handing it to Angela. It had 4 objects on it: a key to Angela’s apartment, a key to Chan’s locked desk drawer, a key to his and Tony’s apartment, and a small plastic teacup charm, “He bought me that when we went to Disneyland. He doesn’t even like Disney that much, he only really cares about Star Wars, but he wanted me to go for the first time, so he held my hand and dragged me onto every single fucking ride. You saw how I was when you tried to hold my hand after that eye appointment I took you to; I don’t like holding hands, but I didn’t care then because it was him. I didn’t care about anything with him, and now he’s gone, and he seems so much happier now, and I want to be happy for him but it fucking sucks to think that I wasn’t as right for him as he was for me. I miss him so much.”

“I know I probably shouldn’t tell you this,” Angela started, looking down at her feet, “But he’s not happier without you. I think you were it for him too.”

They sat in silence for the rest of the drive, Chan trying to understand what she had just told him, and Angela trying as hard as she could to stop herself from saying anything else. When they got back to the apartment, she went to her bedroom, sensing that Chan needed some time to himself, and he laid down on the couch, staring at the ceiling trying to think through everything. He closed his eyes, and for a second he felt like he was back in their apartment—he felt like he was home—but he knew he wasn’t. Angela’s apartment was nice, but it didn’t have the same familiarity, it didn’t give him the same comfort. He wished he was on his own couch, with Tony in the other room humming to himself while he scrolled aimlessly through his phone. He wished he could be in their kitchen again, making dinner for the two of them while Tony was singing along to whatever song he was playing on his bluetooth speaker. He just wished he was with Tony again, but he wasn’t. He was laying down on Angela’s couch, in Angela’s apartment, and Tony was nowhere to be found. He wanted nothing more than for Tony to come to the door, so they could fix everything together, but he had an unpleasant feeling weighing him down: the feeling that it was already too late for the two of them.

~Tony’s P.O.V.~

It had been 5 weeks. 5 weeks since they fought for the last time, 5 weeks of reading up on plant care and watering all the houseplants just for the possibility of seeing him smile when he inevitably came to pick up his things, 5 weeks of sleeping on his couch and hugging a pillow every night because sleeping in their bed would only make him miss Chan more.

He had to get used to using his own car again after he had gotten so used to Chan’s. It was an older car, a hand-me-down from his older brother that he’d had since he was 16. He was planning to sell it since he didn’t really have any need for it anymore, but that was before Chan left. He thought it would help him to just get in and drive, but there was nowhere he could go where he wouldn’t see something that made him think of Chan. He thought he saw him outside of the movie theater, or at a cafe, he even thought he passed him on his way back to the apartment a few times, but he just dismissed the thought. He thought about going to Angela’s apartment, because he knew that’s where he would be, but every time he turned around before he could even get halfway there.

Angela checked in on him every few days, so he had no reason to be there anyways. He thought it was odd at first that Angela would care enough to check on him, especially considering that she was better friends with Chan and had never liked Tony much anyways, but he eventually realized that it was the same reason Chan had gone to live with her and let Tony stay in the apartment. It was because they knew he didn’t have anyone else. It wasn’t news to him that people at work didn’t really like him, but he hadn’t really cared since he met Chan because he thought he would always have him there. But now, he was completely alone. Everyone at Space Force knew they broke up, it wasn’t hard to tell, but no one really cared, so he did everything he could to make it seem like he didn’t either.

*

Tony heard a knock on his door and jolted upright. Every time someone came to his door, he held out hope that it would be Chan coming back to him, even when he knew damn well that he had ordered takeout less than an hour ago. Nevertheless, he fixed his hair and walked over to the door, and he still felt a pang of sadness when he opened it and it was just someone delivering his food.

“That’ll be $12.67.”

“Right,” there was a limited number of restaurants near him that offered takeout, so Tony basically had all the prices memorized. Angela told him it was unhealthy to eat so much junk food, but Tony was never good at cooking, so what else did she expect him to do? Chan was always the one who cooked for the two of them, and Tony was happy to just be in the kitchen with him, singing along to the music he would play and making Chan take a break from cooking every once in a while so they could dance together. Now that Chan was gone, it’s not like Tony had anyone else to make food for him.

The only thing he could make really was toast, and somehow Chan was still better at it. He was a morning person, and Tony definitely was not, so he would always wake up after Chan and find that he had made them both toast to eat before work. Chan only made his with peanut butter, but he knew how Tony liked his and always put just the right amount of jam. When Tony made it, he always put too much or too little; he just couldn’t seem to get it right, so he started only using peanut butter. Deep down he knew that it wasn’t because he couldn’t make it right; it was because he would do anything to hold onto his happy memories with Chan, and if that meant eating plain peanut butter toast for the rest of his life, he was okay with that.

*

Every day, Tony would eat his plain peanut butter toast, and every day he would drive to work in his crappy old car, and every day, he would miss Chan more than anything. He missed driving to and from work together, even though Chan always made him get up earlier than he was used to. For the first week or two, he still stayed in his office after work, waiting for Chan to be done in the lab until he realized that there was nothing to wait for anymore. He still walked past the lab on his way to the parking lot, and he would look inside and see Chan working, no matter how badly it hurt him to do so.

Running into each other at work was the best part of Tony’s day before they had started dating, but now it was the worst. He had Chan’s schedule pretty much memorized after a year of dating, so he could mostly avoid awkwardly running into him (along with all of the pain and guilt that came with it), but every once in a while he slipped up. Sometimes he would forget to grab his leftovers before he left the apartment, and would see Chan and Angela sitting together when he went to get something to eat. Sometimes, despite how considerate Mallory was about the breakup, they would both be needed for something and would sit in an awkward silence, with Chan somehow looking somewhere else every time Tony tried to look his way.

When they were dating, Tony would find things on Twitter or Instagram that he thought Chan would like, and he would immediately rush to wherever he was to show him. Chan always asked why he didn’t just send them to him, and Tony always told him that it was because he liked seeing him smile. There were a few times where he saw something and started running towards the lab before realizing that he couldn’t do that anymore. Once, he found a joke someone had made on Twitter about the president’s star and he actually made it into the lab, noisily crashing through the doors and causing everyone to turn and look at him, but he made eye contact with Chan right as someone asked what he was doing and was too distracted by how empty his eyes were when they looked into his that he could only respond with, “I don’t remember.”

Tony was pretty sure that, in his entire life, he’d never run as fast as he did when he left the lab to go back to his office. He didn’t even make it to his chair, he just sunk down to the floor and began choking out sobs as soon as the door was closed. He didn’t want it to hurt as bad as it did, he wanted Chan to move on and feel happier, but when they looked at each other, it was like he didn’t feel anything at all. He didn’t even want to consider the idea that Chan didn’t love Tony as much as Tony loved him, but part of him was always thinking it, and it hurt like hell. He’d been in plenty of relationships before—and plenty of breakups along with them—and they all ended with him being told something along the lines of, “It’s not me, it’s you.” Everyone got tired of him eventually, but he really thought that with Chan it would be different. Chan had always loved him for who he was, even with everything about him that other people hated. He would listen to him talk for hours, and he would rewatch movies any time Tony wanted to no matter how many times they’d seen it together already (Tony couldn’t even get through the first scene in La La Land without thinking of him anymore), and he was always there for Tony, even when he thought he didn’t want him to be, but now he was gone.

*

The more Tony became aware of Chan’s absence, the more he missed him. It was mostly small things that he missed the most, like the little notes Chan would leave around the apartment, or the sound of his laugh that Tony could hear from the other room when he was reading something funny. Sometimes the memories would make him happy, but most of the time they would just bring along the soul-crushing reminder that he could never get any of it back.

As much as the things in their apartment reminded him of Chan, the movie theater is what really reminded Tony of him. Everything there had something to do with a memory they shared, and it almost wasn’t worth it for Tony to put himself through all of the pain of seeing it again just to watch some shitty horror movie. He looked over at the snack counter after buying his tickets, and he started to walk over, but he had to turn around, immediately bumping into another person and knocking them to the floor.

“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Tony said, helping the other man up, “I was heading to the snack bar but I changed my mind, too much sugar you know?” He chuckled halfheartedly, “I am so—”

“I don’t really care, just watch where you’re going.”

Tony brushed it off, despite how rude the man had been, and went to watch the movie. It wasn’t great, but he had to admit that it was scary at times. Chan hated watching horror movies, not because they were scary but because he thought they were stupid and unrealistic. They clearly had some differences in opinions when it came to movies (Tony once joked to Angela that maybe the reason they didn’t work was because Chan was a prequel apologist, and immediately burst into tears), but they were mostly just happy to be spending time together.  
Chan still watched horror movies with Tony, though, and he would talk the whole way home about all the ridiculous aspects of each one. While he was watching the movie, Tony found himself instinctively reaching to grab Chan’s hand whenever there was a jump scare, but every time he only grabbed onto the cold arm of the chair next to him, and Chan was nowhere near.

As Tony was leaving the theater, someone came up behind him and grabbed his arm. He was freaked out at first, but once he turned around he saw that it was the man from before.

“Hey man, I just wanted to apologize for before, I was kind of a dick.”

“Oh—uh—that’s fine,” Tony looked at him with a confused expression, “I was the one who bumped into you anyways.”

“Yeah, still sorry, though,” the man let go of Tony’s arm and extended his hand for him to shake, “I’m Stanley, by the way.”

“I’m Tony,” he shook Stanley’s hand and started to turn to walk away, but before he could Stanley started to speak again.

“I know we just met, but do you want to go get dinner sometime.”

Tony looked at him, a bit dumbfounded, “Oh, sorry, but I’m taken,” he wasn’t sure why he said it, and he convinced himself it was just because he didn’t want to go out with someone named Stanley, but he still called Angela as soon as he got in his car and asked her to come to his apartment.

*

“This better be good, Scarapiducci, I have somewhere to be in 30 minutes and I am not giving up my free time so you can rant to me about your tenth rewatch all the movies you’ve borrowed from me and never given back,” Angela said, walking into Tony’s apartment and finding him sitting on the floor and staring at the episode of Community that was playing on his TV. This would be normal, except that (in light of recent events) he would usually be sniffling and saying, “Why can’t they just see that they’re in love,” every time Troy and Abed were together onscreen. This time, though, he was just staring blankly at the screen, and Angela wasn’t sure if he was even paying attention, “Okay, something’s wrong. What happened?” She asked, sitting down next to him on the floor.

“I think I’m still in love with Chan,” he blurted out, turning to face her with a distraught expression.

“Well, yeah of course you are, it’s only been a few weeks since you broke up.”

“No, I don’t mean that I’m just not over him, I mean that he’s it for me. I’m never going to be as happy as I was with him, and I would literally do anything to get that feeling back,” he put his head in his hands, failing miserably at concealing the fact that he had started crying, “He’s everything to me, and I know that I hurt him, and he hurt me too, but I miss him so much. I see him everywhere I go, even when he isn’t there, and I can’t shake the feeling that I could’ve done something better, that I could’ve changed the way things happened. I just wish he was still here.”

Angela didn’t really know what to do, so she just moved closer to him and put her arm around his shoulders, letting him cry and murmuring, “I know,” and, “It’s okay,” every once in a while.

“I want him to be happy, I really do, even if that means giving up my own happiness,” Tony started, choking out sobs as he spoke, “I just wish I knew if he felt the same way. I don’t even know if he cares anymore, and it sucks because I care about him more than anything. We used to talk about our future together like it was nothing; I’ve never been able to do that before. With him, I wasn’t scared, I didn’t care about the “forever” part or how certain it seemed that we’d stay together, because I was certain that we’d stay together; I was excited for it. Now, it just seems like I’m the only one who was.”

“Of course he cares, Tony,” Angela said, keeping her arm around him as he lifted his head up to look at her, even though tears were still running down his face, “And if you really want to know if he feels the way you do, there’s really nothing you can do but ask him.”

She stayed with him for a few more minutes before she had to leave, telling him she had to go to a movie with Chan (and making sure to tell him when it was supposed to be done), and leaving him alone with his thoughts in his empty apartment. He laid down on the couch, looking around at their living room, at all of the plants he had bought for Chan, at the photos of them that Tony had tried to hang up properly but all had ended up a little bit crooked, at the door to their bedroom that was just down the hallway and had remained closed for most of the past 5 weeks. Everything there reminded him of Chan and of their relationship; the constant reminders had been excruciatingly painful since he left, but now they were bringing him comfort. The whole apartment felt familiar, safe; it almost felt like home, except for one thing that it was missing.

He would never feel at home without Chan.

*

He sat on that couch for more than 2 hours, considering and reconsidering everything about their relationship and everything he could do to fix what had happened. He never really came to a definite conclusion, but he still found himself standing outside of Angela’s apartment, exactly an hour after the movie should have ended.

“I take it you’re not here to return my Raiders of the Lost Ark DVD?” Angela said after she opened the door. Tony gave her an exasperated look, so she just rolled her eyes and continued, “Yeah yeah, I’ll go get him.”

Tony waited in the doorway for a few minutes before Chan finally appeared, “What are you doing here, Tony?” He asked, giving him a look that was a gut-wrenching mix of confusion and sadness.

“I know that we broke up for a reason,” Tony started, holding up his hand to stop Chan from saying anything yet, “And I know that it was a good reason, because we hurt each other, but I still fucking love you. I love you so much, you have no idea. I have been in Hell for the past 5 weeks because for me, living without you isn’t really living at all. You don’t have to say that you feel the same—hell, you don’t have to say anything at all—you could just shut the door in my face, and I would get out of your life for good, but I don’t want that. And, honestly, I don’t think you want that either, so just—I don’t know—just do something.”

Chan looked at him for a moment, a moment that felt like forever for both of them, but then he simply reached his arms out and pulled Tony into a hug. Tony wrapped his arms around him in return and rested his head on Chan’s shoulder, melting into the embrace and letting a tear roll down his face. Neither of them said anything for a minute or two, they just stayed there, taking in the warmth and familiarity of it all, not wanting to ever let go.

“You still love me?” Chan asked quietly, still not letting go of him.

“How could I ever love someone else?”

**Author's Note:**

> the angst fic is finally here!!! i went through so much pain writing this im so sorry lmao follow me on twitter @trxymiller :)


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